When Newcastle’s Eldon Square shopping entre opened in 1976, one of its early attractions was a pub called the Cordwainwers.
You might remember it. If you entered the centre next to Grey’s Monument, the drinking hole was on the lower level, on the left, just past WH Smith. There was also an entrance from Nelson Street. It attracted a relatively fashionable crowd in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, notwithstanding the fact it was situated in a shopping complex.
Regulars might not have been aware of the historical significance of the pub's name. The cordwainers (or shoemakers) of Newcastle, in fact, dated back to the time when Queen Mary Tudor was on the throne. The guild of cordwainers was formed in 1556, one of a dozen guilds in the old town of Newcastle. The guild had nearly 100 members, making it one of the largest.
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The cordwainers were at one time based in Pilgrim Street. In Mackenzie’s 1827 history of Newcastle, we are told: "In this street is the elegant hall of the company of Cordwainers, underneath which is a large weigh-house for leather, where also great quantities of this valuable article are kept."
Back up at Eldon Square shopping centre, step out on to Nelson Street and the grand, sandstone, three-storey facade of the Cordwainers Hall still stands. Look up and you’ll see the large inscription telling us the date of the building’s origin MDCCCXXXVIII – or 1838, the year after Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne.
Behind the preserved facade in 2023, the shoppers of Eldon Square go about their business. This was where the Cordwainers pub traded from the late 1970s into the 80s. By the 1990s a bar called Cork’s had replaced it. They were preceded, back in the 1960s, by a pub called the Gardeners Arms, a drinking hole which closed in the early ‘70s to make way for the emerging shopping complex. Step inside here nowadays and you’ll find Grey’s Quarter, a recently refurbished area of the shopping mall comprising of more than 20 restaurants.
Nelson Street can be found towards the top of Grainger Street. Take a left as you approach Grey’s Monument. The street was named after the hero of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, while Nelson’s deputy – Newcastle-born Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood – is, of course, immortalised in a street named after him elsewhere the city.
Nelson Street was once home to a dispensary, Primitive Methodist chapel, and a Victorian music hall where, in 1861, Charles Dickens gave readings of his works Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield and Dombey and Son. The great author declared: “A finer audience there is not in England.”
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